Concept Of Grading

CONCEPT OF GRADING

“Grading requires thoughtful and informed professional judgment.”

Grading is regarded as a way of measuring, where we categorize the academic achievement of a child and reward the various categories as per the child’s performance. It is the process of applying standardized measurements of varying levels of achievement in a course. Grading can be done in many ways. It can be in the form of letters (example: A-F), range (example: 1-6) and as a percentage of a total number of questions answered correctly, or as a number out of a possible total (for example out of 20 or 100).

In some countries, all grades from all current classes are averaged to create a Grade Point Average (GPA) for the marking period. The GPA is calculated

Usually different students take different amount of time to attain mastery. Mastery grading first originated in 1920 as a grading strategy and then it became associated with educational strategy of mastery learning (Bloom Hastings and Madaus, 1971).

Criterion reference grading Gronlund, N.E.(1985) states that criterion reference test is, “a test designed to provide the measure of performance that is interpret-able in terms of a clearly defined and delimited domain of learning tasks.” Earlier it was known as standard grading but recently the advocates have replaced the term standard with criterion but uses the same principle and measures the same level of performance.

Glaster (1963) first used the term CRT to highlight he need for tests that can describe the position of a learner on a performance continuum, rather than the learner’s rank within a group of learners. The word ‘criterion’ in CRT refers to a domain of behaviors and in criterion referencing one is interested in examining the examinee’s test performance to a well defined domain of behavior measuring an objective or

It is useful to identify the students who have mastered the essential of the course more than others.

It is useful to select the best of the applicants for a particular programme or vocation.

It is useful to find out how effective a programme is in comparison to other possible programmes.

CRITERION REFERENCING

Criterion Reference Test is meant to measure the achievement of an examinee on a certain domain to find out his level of achievement in that domain. It is a test that focuses on assessing student mastery of specific skills, regardless of how other students performed on the same skills. Evaluation is closely related to the curriculum being taught and to the lesson or course objective

Characteristics

Its main objective is to measure the student’s achievement of curriculum based skills

It is prepared for a particular grade or course level

It is used to evaluate the curriculum plan, instructional progress and group interaction

It has balanced representation of goals and objectives

It can be administered before and after instruction

It is generally reported in the form of:

Minimum scores for partial and total mastery of main skill